Chinese GP: Williams Friday practice report

After three hours of intensive homework at the Shanghai circuit today, the
AT&T Williams team completed much of the groundwork in preparation for
tomorrow's Chinese Grand Prix qualifying session. While the routine tyre
compares and other necessary...

After three hours of intensive homework at the Shanghai circuit today, the
AT&T Williams team completed much of the groundwork in preparation for
tomorrow's Chinese Grand Prix qualifying session. While the routine tyre
compares and other necessary preparatory work was undertaken, set-up changes
and improving track conditions allowed both drivers to find over a second a
lap from the start of the day to the close of play. Fine tuning will be the
order of the third and final practice tomorrow, before the afternoon's
all-important qualifying session.

Nico Rosberg:

I am broadly okay with how things went today as I remember how difficult we
found it here with our car working the tyres last year, but this time round
the tyres are performing well. That said, we are still not quick enough, but
we have progressed the car well since this morning, working on the weight
distribution which positively affected the balance, which in turn helped the
tyres. We'll just have to wait and see how qualifying will shape up
tomorrow.

Kazuki Nakajima:

Today went quite alright in my view. We tried a couple of set-up directions
and we improved steadily throughout the sessions, and learnt lots about the
new tyre on this track. Although I didn't race here last year, the Friday
practice time I had out on the circuit helped me get off to a good start.

Rod Nelson, Chief Operations Engineer:

We ran through a normal Friday programme, with the morning focused on
finding the balance on the car, while in the afternoon we did the tyre test,
running the prime against the option, as well as some longer runs for race
preparation. The circuit was fairly dusty off-line, which caught a few
people out at turns 11 & 12, but we managed to avoid any problems. The cars
ran reliably and as usual from here will look at the data in preparation for
tomorrow.